NEW YORK TIMES: A home health care worker in Durham, N.C.; a McDonald’s cashier in Chicago; a bank teller in New York; an adjunct professor in Mayfield, Ill. They are all evidence of an improving economy, because they are working and not among the steadily declining ranks of the unemployed.
Yet these same people also are on public assistance — relying on food stamps, Medicaid or other stretches of the safety net to help cover basic expenses when their paychecks come up short.
And they are not alone. Nearly three-quarters of the people helped by programs geared to the poor are members of a family headed by a worker, according to a new study by the Berkeley Center for Labor Research and Education at the University of California. As a result, taxpayers are providing not only support to the poor but also, in effect, a huge subsidy for employers of low-wage workers, from giants like McDonald’s and Walmart to mom-and-pop businesses… (more)
EDITOR: Our hotels, unlike our apartment complexes, are an excellent example of the above. Hotel competition is ruthless in most areas due to overbuilding. So wages are driven down to a deplorable level. (Yes, we are ashame, but labor is a huge factor in costs, unlike the apartment industry.)
If minimum wages were increased to $12 an hour, every hotel would have to pay them. Other hotel wages would also rise to reward talent and experience. Rooms would simply sell for a couple of dollars more per night. And the taxpayers would subsidize less if at all.
